Posts
A World of Unforeseen
Complexities
Remarks to the British Columbia Public Sector Pension
Conference
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)
Victoria, British Columbia 1 May 2014
We live in an
age of discontinuities. Internationally,
at least, the past and present no longer serve as reliable guides to the
future. Our expectations are regularly
shown to be unrealistic. It’s clear that
we misperceive the present as often as we comprehend it. So we are constantly surprised by trends and
events.
We did not
anticipate the major factors that shaped the world after the Cold War
ended. We were stunned by the implosion
of the Soviet Union and blindsided by the rapid return of China to wealth and
power. Triumphalism born of the Soviet
collapse led many to hope that history had culminated in the global victory of
liberal democracy and the vindication of Western values. But American efforts to implant these values
in places like Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iraq fostered anarchy instead.
History may
have taken a vacation but it’s back with renewed vigor, at least in Eastern
Europe and East Asia. Europe and the
United States are again in a tug of war with Russia over both its frontiers and
the political orientation of its neighbors.
China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Vietnam now posture
belligerently over the ownership of islets, rocks, and reefs in the empty seas
between them. Borders fixed in the eras
of colonialism and the Cold War are no longer immutable.
Some
democratically elected governments have been overthrown by mobs. Other democracies, including Canada and the
United States, enthusiastically supported these crowd-sourced regime changes
because we disliked the elected governments they overthrew or found their
policies inconvenient. Whatever the
organizing principle of the age may be, it is no longer the defense of
democracy against those who view it as an obstacle to political navigation.
Few foresaw
that Wall Street’s tower of derivatives and credit swaps would suddenly tumble
down. Banks too big to fail were
revealed to have been piling up profits and moral hazard in equal
proportions. They are still doing this,
but the laissez-faire “Washington consensus” – once extolled as embodying
irrefutable wisdom about greed – is now largely discredited. Many fear that declining labor participation
rates and continuing sluggishness in mature economies mark a secular trend
rather than a recessionary business cycle from which we will soon recover.
Fear of energy
shortages from an imagined “peak” in oil production has been displaced by
surging yields of shale gas and tight oil.
Returns on capital exceed profits from the production of goods and
services and compounded financial gains exceed them greatly. Karl Marx would be gratified to see his
predictions belatedly playing out.
Privately held
capital is accumulating faster than economies are growing. As a result, the world is everywhere
nurturing new plutocratic castes. In the
United States and some other democracies, the disappearance of socio-economic
consensus and political give and take has crippled democratic decision-making
and paralyzed fiscal policy, leaving the management of economic recovery to
currency manipulation by central banks.
Both global
institutions and the industrial democracies are seriously underperforming at
governance. Much of the West is
afflicted with self-doubt. Confidence in
government and levels of political participation are both at historic
lows. A few authoritarian regimes like
China’s meanwhile respond with apparent confidence and efficiency to the huge socio-economic
challenges before them.
After the end
of the Cold War, most expected parochialism to be washed away by
globalization. Instead, religious and
national identity issues have emerged as central drivers of events in a world
whose dynamics increasingly play out at the regional, not the global
level. Blowback from Western
interventions in the Middle East impassions and empowers reactionary fanatics
with global reach. Our reliance on the
use of force to the exclusion of other instruments of statecraft, including
diplomatic suasion, feeds this trend.
Military power,
however irresistible, has regularly
failed to transform the political economies or alter the mores of the foreign
societies to which we have applied it.
Coercive diplomacy based on sanctions and backed by military superiority
has consistently proven useless. In
Ukraine, most recently, it proved irrelevant to Russia’s ingenious use of flash
mobs to filch territory. Sanctions
inflict pain but do not change the policies of foreign powers for the
better. Yet, when these or other
coercive measures don’t work, our response is to repeat them, only more
expensively and harder.
We have
inadvertently kindled religious wars in the realm of Islam. We have no answer to what we have stirred up
other than the assassination by drone warfare of sketchily identified, presumed enemies. This stokes outrage among the friends,
relatives, compatriots, and coreligionists of those our machines kill and
strengthens their determination to seek revenge. If slaughter by robot of people targeted by
remote control is the answer to some quandary, what, precisely, was the
question it is supposed to address? By
what authority do we do it? Drone
warfare is a reminder, if we needed one, that international law has broken down
and that we do not understand the impact of new technologies on our lives or
how to protect ourselves from the vulnerabilities they create.
All this is to
say that wherever our world has arrived, it is nowhere we wanted or expected to
be. We need to get our bearings if we
are to chart a course in the sea of uncertainties on which we are now adrift. What are the main winds and tides that will
most affect that course? Where are we
headed? We failed to predict the
present. What is our future going to
look like?
It would be
nice to be able to tell you the answer to this question. (I think God may once have confided it to me,
but I was reading emails and didn’t quite catch what She said.) In the absence of an untroubled conscience
and divine guidance, the best I can do is to speak to you about a few things to
watch out for and some of the factors that now seem to be driving us toward a
future we cannot yet discern.
I’d like to
focus our discussion this morning on six of these factors. They have to do with (1) the devolution of
previously centralized global power to the world’s regions; (2) the
intensification of nationalism; (3) the
reemergence of Asia as the world’s center of economic gravity; (4) how we
settle disputes; (5) the disruptive effects of cybernetics; and (6), finally,
the reactions of my own country – the United States – to these and other
destabilizing developments. For better
or ill, given the United States’ global preeminence and power, Washington’s
reactions to trends and events bear greatly on outcomes. Americans are gradually realizing that
providence has not empowered us to administer the world order in perpetuity,
but this realization is sinking in slowly and painfully. And not all of us yet get it.
The
uncertainties before us are a real challenge to both statesmen and long-term
investors. In a situation of increasing
turmoil, what should we now be watching out for?
Let me begin
with an acknowledgment of the ongoing breakdown in global governance. Institutions like the United Nations and
International Monetary Fund (IMF) embody constellations of power that long ago
wheeled off into the night. They
entrench the privileges of the victors of World War II. They do not reflect the global and regional
strengths of the rising powers of today.
This factor alone has robbed them of much legitimacy. Washington’s frustration with its declining
ability to dominate these institutions and its increasing tendency to ignore
them have further impaired their effectiveness.
It does not help that the U.S. political system seems to have suffered
the functional equivalent of a mentally incapacitating stroke.
Americans were
the principal authors of the U.N. Charter and champions of a rule-bound world
order. But the United States has long
exempted itself from the strictures of international law it seeks to apply to
others, as the invasions of Grenada in 1983 and of Panama in 1989 are often cited
to illustrate. In 1998 and ‘99, the U.S.
bypassed the U.N. and launched NATO on a war to detach Kosovo from Serbia. NATO succeeded in doing this, though not in
stabilizing Kosovo’s status as a newly independent state. Washington defied the Security Council in its
2003 invasion and subsequent eight-year-long occupation of Iraq. Some were appalled by these examples of great
power disdain for the U.N. and the rules it was meant to enforce. Others, among them Vladimir Putin, clearly
seem to have found comfort and even inspiration in them.
As a result, it
is hard to argue that international law now provides any protection at all from
military mistreatment by a stronger foreign power. Certainly, Georgians, Libyans, Syrians, and
Ukrainians have not been able to rely upon it.
It has not protected the Palestinians.
Nor is it ever referred to as inhibiting an unprovoked assault on
Iran.
As faith in the
ability of the international system to deter and react to aggression declines
and the constraints of the law (such as they were) disappear, military
deterrence has reemerged as the only plausible bulwark against attack by more
powerful opponents. When the potential
assailant is a nuclear power – like the United States, Russia, or Israel – with a record of
assaulting non-nuclear states, other countries readily conclude that they need
their own nuclear deterrent to preclude foreign bullying or attack. Scofflaw behavior evokes vigilant defiance
and military self-help on the part of those it menaces. It does not induce resignation to double
standards. It causes resentment and
inflames the passions of nationalism.
Einstein called
nationalism “an infantile disease – the measles of mankind.” It and religious fervor are now everywhere
intensifying and, with them, xenophobia, economic recrimination, delusions of
persecution, protectionism, and the sanctimonious stereotyping of others in
misleading narratives. Publics in the
major powers are increasingly suspicious of each other’s governments. Americans, Indians, and Japanese don’t trust
Beijing. Chinese and Russians don’t
trust Washington. No one trusts
Islamabad, Moscow, Tehran, or Tokyo. And
so forth.
Mutual mistrust
impairs rational decisions and deal-making.
Suspicion entails opportunity costs. Resource nationalism impedes the
development of energy, minerals, and other raw materials. One cannot now assume that, just because a
transaction is good for everyone economically, it will go through. Military anxieties inhibit exchanges of
technology. All this retards the
realization of comparative advantage, troubles relationships, and depresses
economic growth.
As a close
cousin of truculence, nationalism, of course, is a menace to much more than
trade and investment. The theorists of
inevitable war between established and rising powers are now on all the talk
shows. This is dangerous if only
because, as George Kennan observed: "a war regarded as inevitable or even
probable, and therefore much prepared for, has a very good chance of eventually
being fought."
China, in
particular, is becoming more assertive about defending its near seas and the
islands and rocks it claims in them. The
United States seems determined to continue to dominate China’s coasts and has
consistently sided de facto against China
in its territorial disputes with all of its neighbors. Beijing and Washington now treat each other
as the enemies of choice for purposes of war planning. Some see parallels to the combination of
intensifying strategic rivalry and complacency about the unlikelihood of armed
conflict that preceded World War I. That shambles reminds us that the fact that
something is senseless and desired by no one does not mean it can’t and won’t
happen.
The escalation
of regional military modernization efforts and arms races is evidenced in
annual increases in the global arms trade of around 14 percent. Military spending is falling in the West but
rising everywhere else, especially in countries that have come to identify the United
States as the primary potential threat to their sovereignty and
independence. And the turn to greater
reliance on military power alone for security almost certainly also foretells
an acceleration of nuclear proliferation.
One entirely
rational reaction to the ramp-up in defense spending in former colonies and
dependencies of the West would be to invest in one’s own country’s defense
industries. The market for what they
make seems certain to continue its current robust growth. Another, less narrowly focused, more
thoughtful, and – arguably – more effective response is to step up the effort
to assess and hedge against political risk.
With the notion of a rule-bound international order in retreat, the use
of force or intimidation to settle disputes is becoming more likely, making trends
and events even less predictable than they have been.
In the past,
Western nations tended to see foreign policy as something we could inflict on
others with impunity. The mentality was
nicely captured in Hillaire Belloc's poem about Western technological
advantages in warfare in which the protagonist
"... stood upon a little mound / Cast his lethargic eyes around, / And said
beneath his breath: / 'Whatever happens, we have got / The Maxim Gun, and they
have not.'"
No more. One clear but unwelcome – and therefore
mostly unstated – lesson of 9/11 is that, if the West strikes at its former
colonies and dependencies, people there will find a way to strike back. A terrorist is someone with a grudge and a bomb
but no air force. There are ever more
people with grudges out there and new thoughts about how to make bombs. There are beginning to be more air forces
too.
The escalation
of political risk implicit in the declining effectiveness of the institutions
of global governance goes beyond terrorism and the politico-military
sphere. Consider the IMF and its role in
sustaining a stable global monetary order by facilitating trade and investment
flows and in mitigating or curing instances of national financial
dysfunction. Both these roles are now at
risk.
In 2010, the
U.S. responded to demands by rising economic powers for a greater say in global
monetary policies and financial crisis management by proposing relatively minor
adjustments in IMF governance. These
reforms remain stymied by congressional concern that they might lessen U.S.
control of the IMF. This recalcitrance
is based on an overestimation of current U.S. leverage amidst shifting
international balances of financial power.
One result is to hamstring international efforts to stabilize places
like Ukraine and reform the international monetary system to reduce financial
risks. Another is to undercut the very
U.S. influence the opponents of reform seek to preserve.
At their
just-concluded meeting in Washington, IMF members suggested quite firmly that
U.S. failure to approve the 2010 reforms would cause them to develop some sort
of work-around or alternative to U.S. participation in future decision-making
on the management of the global monetary system. Maybe they mean to do this. Maybe they don’t. Time will tell. The outcome will determine how the
international reserve and monetary systems of the future function.
Without reform,
international institutions created in the aftermath of World War II have a
limited half life. This is true of a
growing range of global bodies and activities beyond the U.N. or IMF, like
trade liberalization talks under the World Trade Organization (WTO), the system
of web addresses and domain names that organize cyberspace, the management of
internet security, global arms control and non-proliferation regimes,
development assistance to poor nations, and so forth. In each case, multilateral organizations,
processes, and regulatory systems are being superseded by sub-global, regional,
and national work-arounds and regulatory
regimes.
The world is in
the process of devolving into blocs, coalitions, and regional orders that
respond to the agendas of their members rather than those of the United States,
other outside powers, or the international community at large. You can see this trend almost
everywhere. Consider, for example, the
disintegration of greater Syria, the
dismemberment of Ukraine, the chaos in the Sahel and central Africa, and the
renewed antagonism between Japan and Korea as well as Japan and China. No one knows how these fragments of the
decaying world order of the past will evolve, still less how they will fit
together. Meanwhile, shifting coalitions
of the willing are replacing the rigid alliance structures of the Cold
War. Alliances now facilitate
cooperation; they no longer oblige it.
Hence the insatiable demand by allies of the United States for strategic
reassurance.
This devolution
adds to the unpredictability of world events, including economic as well as
political and military events. The
uncertainty is all the greater because the disintegration of global authority
coincides with the emergence of the Indo-Pacific at the center of the
globalized world economy. For the first
time in two centuries, the heirs of the Euro-American Enlightenment are no
longer in a position to control or set the pace of global
political-economy. The world expects
that Asian powers, partially Westernized by the bruising imperatives of
modernization but with their own very different values and traditions, will now
take the lead. But will they? What if squabbles between them preclude
this? What if they want the prestige but
not the burdens of leadership?
Sadly, as world
leaders gather in New York each fall for the opening of the U.N. General
Assembly, no one looks anymore to the U.S. president for leadership. new ideas,
or bold initiatives. Everyone knows that
he’s there to use the U.N. as a prop for a speech to a domestic U.S. audience
or because if you aren’t at the table, you’re on the menu. Tired as it is of American hectoring and
hypocrisy, the world is listening carefully for new ideas from China, India,
and other rising powers about how to manage the challenges facing our species
and its diverse societies. So far, it
must be admitted, it hasn’t heard many.
This is, in
part, because Asians are drawn together by resentment of past domination by the
West but divided by remarkably different languages, histories, religious
traditions, customs, and political and socio-economic systems. The most powerful Asian states – China,
India, Japan, Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Vietnam – are strategic rivals who are
so embittered by history as to be immune to empathy and severely diplomatically
challenged. Then, too, the Indo-Pacific
region does not have the cultural coherence, including the inheritance of the
Greco-Roman heritage and the Judeo-Christian tradition or the devotion to the
rule of law, that marks Atlantic civilization.
To say that
someone is European, American, or Canadian tells you something. So does identifying him or her as Chinese,
Indian, Indonesian, or Japanese. To say
that someone is Asian tells you nothing much at all. Efforts to define “Asian values” seldom get
past the dimwittedly self-evident initial observation that they’re “non-Western.” Asians do not have much of a common
agenda. But they are beginning to have
an increasing impact on the world order.
Ironically, the
primary way in which Asians have done this is not by advancing “non-Western”
ideas but through their adamant defense of concepts they first resisted and
then imported from the West a hundred or more years ago. They have become passionately committed to
the concept of the sovereign equality of states that is the central thesis of
the Westphalian order. China and India,
in particular, have been at the forefront of those standing firm against any
kind of foreign intervention in the internal affairs of other states. They oppose any and all limits on sovereignty
– for example, to justify “humanitarian intervention.” Unfortunately for peace and stability in the
Indo-Pacific region, this aversion to limits on sovereignty has the side effect
of preventing the organization of
regional bodies that could temper or mediate disputes between its states.
The “five
principles of peaceful coexistence” (or panch
sheela) formulated by China and India in 1954, and proclaimed as an Asian
consensus at Bandung in 1955, were seen at the time as a declaration of
non-alignment in the Cold War. They were
that. But, more fundamentally, they were
an Asian endorsement of the Westphalian state system. As such, they represented a decisive
repudiation of previous Asian models for regional and international order,
including the imperial Chinese “tributary system” and the Indo-Ottoman notion
of suzerainty as an alternative to sovereign equality. Such premodern notions are now never invoked
by Asians as operative concepts. One
hears of them only from polemicists seeking to make Beijing’s maritime
territorial disputes with its neighbors into inscrutably oriental zero-sum
games requiring an American military response.
The
Indo-Pacific region is now moving in three somewhat contradictory
directions.
First. Countries in the region are integrating their
economies. The China mainland, Hong
Kong, Macau, and Taiwan are becoming an economic commonwealth and its
prosperity is creating a regional economic order that centers on this new
"greater China." Indo-Pacific
supply chains, business networks, transportation links, and financial lines of
communication increasingly converge in Chinese cities. More and more roads lead to Beijing, Hong
Kong, Shanghai, and Taipei.
Prospects for
the conclusion of a pan-Asian “Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership”
(RCEP) by the end of next year (2015) are good. This partnership would bring Australia, China,
India, Japan, south Korea, New Zealand, and the ten member countries of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) into a single free-trade area. The area includes some of the world’s fastest
growing economies. Together, its
participants have 46 percent of world population and about one-fourth of the
global economy. (By comparison, NAFTA
and the EU each account for about one-fifth of the world’s economy and have,
respectively, 6 and 7 percent of its people.)
Second. Reform is once again a dominant component of
regional dynamics. Japan is
experimenting with radical approaches to reinvigorating its economy. China has embarked on another round of fundamental economic restructuring and
liberalization, this time including major reform of capital markets. India seeks renewed market opening and
reform. A decade ago, an initial round
of liberalization boosted India’s growth rate and filled it with patriotic
optimism. More recently, reform and
growth have both lost momentum.
Indonesia, at present an
unattractive place for foreign investment due to resource nationalism
and corruption, is trying to get its groove back. The Indo-Pacific region is refashioning
itself for a prosperous future in which its global role will be even larger
than today.
Third. China’s rising military power and political
influence are quite predictably stimulating the formation of coalitions
calculated to balance it. They are also
dividing Asia into continental and maritime domains. The United States backs Japanese and Filipino
resistance to accommodating China. India
seeks strategic partnership with Japan. Korea
– as usual – is caught in the middle.
ASEAN is now divided on issues relating to China. Even as China’s rise integrates the
Indo-Pacific region economically, it is splitting it politically.
The proximate
cause of political division is disputes over borders. There is, of course, nothing new about these
disputes. Differences over the location
of the Sino-Indian frontier originated under British imperialism. India and China fought a war over these
differences in 1962. Disputes over
maritime borders in the East and South China Seas date back more than a
century. What is new is the capacity of
the various claimants to islands, rocks, and reefs – China, Japan, Malaysia,
the Philippines, Vietnam – to assert their claims against each other with
competent navies and coast guards and to use these quarrels to mobilize
nationalism to legitimize their actions.
Asia now provides daily reminders of the insight that a nation is "a group of people
united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbors."[1]
What is most
disturbing about these controversies is that there is currently no obvious
mechanism for resolving them by measures short of war. There are no agreements or structures in
place in Asia comparable to those in Europe.
There, the danger of war between the West and Russia over Ukraine has
just been mitigated by joint referral to the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). There is
no real record of mediation by third parties of such disputes in the
Indo-Pacific region.
In Europe and
the Americas, resort to arbitration has come to be seen as a desirable
alternative to armed conflict. By
contrast, the Asian variant of Westphalianism appears to leave no room for
dispute settlement by reference to international law. Japan denies that there is or can be any
dispute at all about sovereignty over the Senkaku islands for it to litigate
with China. South Korea takes the same
uncompromising position with regard to Japan’s claim to Dokdo. China rejects the Philippines’ attempt to
refer disputes over South China Sea islands, rocks, and reefs to arbitration by
a UN tribunal. And so forth.
Such rigidly
self-righteous positions effectively preclude conflict resolution by either
diplomatic dialogue or reference to international law or organizations. They leave emotionally charged quarrels to
fester indefinitely or to be settled by pushing and shoving or acts of
war. If this is the approach to dispute
settlement that Asians plan to practice and export to the world, it heralds a
very big step backwards from the 20th century notion that the
exercise of sovereignty can and should be constrained by internationally agreed
rules and procedures. Does the slow
retreat of Western dominance foretell the fading of the global commitment to
the rule of law?
Judging by
what’s now happening in cyberspace, it may.
In economic terms, cyberspace is an all-pervasive medium that boosts
productivity by annihilating distance and facilitating the efficient production
and exchange of goods and services.
Entrepreneurs are only beginning to scratch and explore its commercial potential. The internet has rapidly become an
indispensable mechanism for commercial and cultural collaboration,
technological innovation, corporate operations, and all kinds of human
transactions. It has also become a
lawless no man's land in which rights are not protected against theft and
liberties are infringed at will by both state and non-state actors. It is essential to modern life and at the
same time increasingly hazardous to it.
From a military
point of view, cyberspace is a new-found domain through which to engage the
enemy. In war, both height and
concealment confer advantage. Airspace
is above both the land and the sea. In
military terms, that makes it a superior domain to both. Space is higher still, allowing the
domination of the air, land, and sea from above. In this logic, cyberspace, which permeates
every place that man goes, including space, is the highest domain of all. It is also one in which concealment is
relatively easy. Military establishments
everywhere see it as an environment through which to attack and in which attack
by others must be vigorously deterred.
In both space
and cyberspace, America’s desire to retain technological supremacy and Russia’s
need to offset its conventional military weakness encounter China’s disinterest
in the rule of law and its focus on exploiting asymmetrical means of warfare to
counter legacy American strengths. The
result is a complete lack of effort to develop rules of engagement and legal
constraints that might limit the ways in which human beings can devastate each
other’s societies through and from these
domains.
Stuxnet – the
Israeli-American cyber attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities – was,
unfortunately, the first strike in a new age of militarily aggressive
exploitation of cyberspace. Cyberwarfare
raises strategic and doctrinal challenges at least as novel and complex as
those posed by the balance of nuclear terror.
Cyber attacks have already destroyed companies. They have the potential to destroy countries
too.
It is striking
that issues like this – indeed, most of the things we now worry about – were
not on our list of concerns even five years ago. Who was then anxious about the rise of the
surveillance state or the resurgence of Russia or whether China and Japan might
go to war over a bunch of rocks with no strategic value inhabited only by
goats? Who worried about the euro or
whether the U.S. would stand by its national debt? Who took seriously the possibility that Scotland
might vote to leave the United Kingdom?
Things have
changed much more than our thinking about our world has. We suffer from a strategy deficit. As a result, we lurch from crisis to crisis
and tactical response to tactical response.
Many such
responses involve sanctions, always the first refuge of political poseurs. Sanctions are useless except as part of an
active bargaining process, but they are now commonly imposed as a politically
more correct substitute for diplomatic dialogue and negotiation. Such punitive measures are no substitute at
all for diplomacy. They usually have little or no effect on the government they
are ostensibly intended to influence, except to get its back up.
Sanctions do,
of course, provide a convenient way for politicians to show outrage, seem to be
doing something, and avoid a debate about
their own responsibility for whatever happened.. They make sure they have no stake in the private
trade and investment ties they are disrupting.
Sanctions shove the costs of foreign policy failures onto businesses,
workforces, and consumers in the country imposing them as well as those in the
society on which they are imposed. They
are typically then evaluated in terms of the pain they inflict, not the behavior they induce.
In today’s
globalized economy and multipolar political order, most sanctions are easily
circumvented. One country’s self-imposed
withdrawal from a foreign market is another’s business opportunity. Sanctions are thus a pernicious -- if
politically predictable -- response to unwelcome events abroad. They illustrate why investors cannot afford to
ignore foreign policy issues. In an age
of discontinuities, situational awareness is key to profitable survival.
We live in a
time in which, past experience suggests, something currently unimaginable – we
don’t know what – is certainly about to happen.
In hindsight, whatever that is will come to be seen after the fact as
having been obvious and inevitable.
Later still, it will be understood to have laid the basis for still more
unforeseen but subsequently obvious developments.
The good news
is that it is very often possible to detect what is obvious in retrospect
before it actually happens. The trick is
to ignore most punditry and to be open-minded and alert to impending change. Intelligence failure is almost always the
result of unwillingness to notice, accept, and understand events that don’t fit
prevailing preconceptions or the canons of political correctness.
Unfortunately, with a few notable
exceptions, the media now mainly supply news that fits within and reinforces
established narratives. Our paper and
electronic press does not provide the kind of unbiased reporting and analysis
that helps to anticipate foreign policy developments that can make or break
business opportunities and investments across borders. Governments attempt to do this but don’t
understand or are indifferent to business interests and often succumb to group
think. This is why there is an expanding
industry devoted to strategic forecasting and the ongoing assessment of the
implications of foreign trends and events.
Since I am not myself in that business, I feel comfortable calling your
attention to such consultancies and urging you to make use of their
services. You’ll have a better chance of
staying on top of things if you do.
Frankly, the world would also be a
great deal more predictable if the United States developed a coherent strategy
to address the series of changes in the world order that began with the end of
the Cold War. Attempting to shore up the
presumed advantages of a crumbling status quo is an investment in the past, not
the future. The alternative to strategy
is piecemeal policy adjustment. That way
lies damaging unpredictability and instability.
The past twenty-five years have
transformed political and economic realities at both the global and regional
levels. Is a network of formal alliances
unaltered (except by enlargement) since it was created to contain a hostile
Soviet Union and China an affordable or effective way to manage the very
different security challenges before this changed world? Americans regard standing by our defense
commitments as a matter of honor. In the
Cold War, we extended such commitments as part of a global effort to balance
and block Soviet expansionism. There is
now no Soviet Union. Is the purpose of
these U.S. defense commitments now simply to protect other countries from their
immediate neighbors? If so, are the
costs and risks of doing this justified by specific American interests?
Do these alliances stimulate allies
to provide for their own defense and sustain regional balances of power to
protect themselves or do they encourage them to look to Washington to perform
these tasks for them? Do U.S. defense
commitments facilitate the resolution of regional disputes between the parties
to these disputes or have the effect of freezing them, perpetuating the risk
that Americans will be dragged into wars over them, whether or not the U.S. has
any direct interest in the issue at hand?
Do defense commitments that involve the United States in quarrels
between other nations that are of little or no direct interest to the American
people contribute or detract from U.S. security and prosperity? Is controlling the seas off China more
important to China or the United States?
If the answer is that it is more important to China, is pretending
otherwise a sound and sustainable approach?
These are questions that a
paralyzed U.S. political establishment does not want to hear and is currently
incapable of addressing. But, with time
and the need to set priorities, a review of inherited strategy will ultimately
be unavoidable. In my view, any serious
review will justify major adjustments in U.S. overseas commitments and
deployments as part of an American turn toward a less militaristic and more agile
foreign policy. The underlying strengths
of the United States are so great that it can still make all the
difference. But, what sort of difference
it makes depends on how linked American strategic behavior is to regional
realities, resource constraints, and international prestige and influence.
Just as climate change entails more
violent weather, changes in geopolitics promise greater volatility in exchange
rates, more frequent political shocks to public markets, the rebirth of
significant regional variations in trading and investment regimes, and
continuing problems in concerting global action to address global issues. The danger that international frictions could
lead to unintended conflict and great power hostilities is substantial. Life was simpler and safer when the so-called
“free world” exploded to embrace the globe and Washington was pretty much
running things. The bad news is that no
one is any longer in charge. The United
States cannot be blamed for this. Stuff
happens. The good news is that there are
historical precedents for long periods of peace and stability under
collectively managed balances of power.
We must hope that the current uncertainties herald our passage to
another such era. Perhaps they do.
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